Brown Sugar Upside Down Cake

My mom recently reminded me of upside down cake. When we were kids she would make peach or pineapple upside down cake, and the fruit was always surrounded by a generous layer of crispy brown sugar topping. I'm not a fan of a lot of fruits (I have a texture thing) and I'm especially not a fan of fruit in cake (except for banana cake/bread. Don't try to figure me out!). I'm sure assorted fruits in cakes taste wonderful, but I don't like when my cake has things in it. It is silly, but there you go. When mom would make her upside down cakes, I would sneak the brown sugar bits off the top and not actually eat the gross fruit/cake. I was/am picky.

Well, I'm an adult now, and when mom reminded me of fruit upside down cake, I decided I would give it a try, but leave out the fruit. Following this recipe, I added some melted butter to a 9x13 cake pan, covered it in a bunch of brown sugar, and then poured a cake on top of it. I baked it, and flipped it over and out onto a cookie sheet. At this point I realized something was amiss, as the brown sugar wasn't as caramelized and stuck to the cake as I wanted. It's possible the fruit had a purpose that I didn't compensate for (maybe it adds liquid while baking).

So the top of the cake was a little crunchier than I expected, but it tasted pretty great. The nice thing about this cake is the topping replaces having to ice it. Easy.

Expanding My Gaming Playlist

I recently began playing Skyrim on the Xbox 360, and I'm really, really, enjoying it. It's only been a few days, but I'm already at level eight, I've collected enough gold to buy a house (5000), and I've picked all the mountain thistle I could find. So far it's been a lot of fun.

I didn't know I was going to like Skyrim, as I've watched John play it before, and I didn't think it was the kind of game I'd be interested in. My tastes are more tuned towards cartoony action/adventure games (mainly the Lego series of games), and I was sure the detailed fantasy world just wasn't my style.

But I've been looking for a new game to play and I described what I was looking for to John:

Me: "Basically I like to run around an open world and find stuff. Collect studs (gold). Unlock cool things by collecting other cool things. Not a lot of enemies. When you die you don't have to go back to the beginning."

John: "You're basically describing Skyrim."

Me: "Am I?"

It turns out I was. There are enemies, but they aren't hard to kill (I learned to use my sword and shield no problem). And sometimes the Non-Player-Characters (NPCs) kill the enemies for you. This happened most famously for me when I was supposed to kill a dragon on the main quest. I hid in a watchtower and was going to hit it with my bow, but it never flew past the window I was aiming from. I went up to the roof to get a better shot and "Completed: Kill the dragon" came across my screen. It made me laugh and I didn't mind at all because I still got to search it's body for supplies and I got all the glory.

I am really glad I gave Skyrim a try, as I like it way more than I thought I would. Plus it's been fun to have John help me with things I cannot do very well on my own (yet). The controller is most often handed over for lock picking, swimming, and for quickly finding specific buildings while I'm running through town (I always seem to be going in the opposite direction of where I want to be).

Red Lobster Appetizers #FoodPicFriday

When Mom and I go out to eat, we often end up really full (or with lots of leftovers) because we think we can eat an appetizer and a full meal all at once. To be fair, sometimes we can, but it mostly depends on how big the appetizer is (note: nachos are pretty much a full meal on their own).

These are two appetizers from Red Lobster taken from two separate visits. I realize these are presentation photos, and don't really show you what the food actually looked like, but take it from me, they were both really good. The first is Lobster Stuffed Mushrooms and the second is Escargot (they're hiding under the mushrooms and cheese).

Toy Workshop

I keep returning to my Knitted Toy Tales pattern book and having so much fun creating cute things. The pieces for the toys are quick knits, so it's easy to get from start to finish on a project.

Since completing my toy fish, I've started working on a teddy bear and an elephant. I have finished all the knitting work for the teddy bear and just need to stuff him and sew him together.

For the elephant toy, I have completed the knitting for the body, the tusks, and two of the legs. Only a few things left to knit and then I can stuff him and sew him together.
 
My delay in finishing these toys is my lack of stuffing. I know I had a bag of it a few years ago, but I've hidden it on myself exceptionally well. We did two thorough searches of the house, and eventually found the tote I was sure it was in, and came up empty. I have accepted that my bag of stuffing is lost and that I have to get a new one, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. So these toys are a work in progress, but I'm looking forward to putting them all together soon.

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

My Mother-in-law had a birthday recently and we celebrated with a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. It is her favourite cake and I am always up for making desserts with cream cheese, as I absolutely love how it tastes in sweets. I don't bake with it very often (it can be expensive when not on sale) but other treats I've enjoyed are: pumpkin cream cheese frosting, cream cheese cinnamon buns, Oreo truffles, and peanut butter truffles.

I used a cake mix for the carrot cake, but I put it in three pans instead of two, as multi-layer cakes are so much fun.

There are loads of cream cheese frosting recipes online, all with varying ratios of cream cheese to icing sugar. One recipe suggested 1 package of cream cheese to 4 cups of icing sugar. Another suggested 2 packages of cream cheese to 2 cups of icing sugar. It was really all over the place. I didn't follow any one recipe, I just keep adding icing sugar until I thought it reached peak taste.

Cream Cheese Frosting
1 package cream cheese (250g), at room temperature for 1 hour
1/2 cup butter (113g), at room temperature
2 1/4 cups icing sugar

Some recipes add vanilla or lemon juice, but I didn't bother adding either, as it tasted so damn good as is. The thing I find deceptive about cream cheese treats, is they don't really taste sweet to me, which makes them incredibly easy to eat. I frequently had to get a new spoon, as I kept licking the one I was working with. With normal buttecream or marshmallow buttercream, I freeze any leftovers and make it into candies. The leftovers for this cream cheese frosting all went into my mouth. I was not shy about eating it at all.

I made some simple carrot decorations for the top of the cake, using ziploc bags to pipe on the frosting.

This cake was very yummy, and I love the three layers. I think it looks lovely.